Kate Clinton is a humorist who has entertained LGBT audiences for 30 years.

The government shutdown is over. Until next time. The government will pay up, and raise thedebt ceiling. Sadly Ted Cruz will not
betarred and feathered. That was my firstidea for a Halloween costume. But I figure everyone will be dressed as scary Ted talking or
Miley twerking. So I’m just going to dip myself in Betadine, pour a bourbon straight up, fire up a non-electronic Marlboro, declare
victoryand trick-or-treat as John Boehner. I will, of course, refuse all treats.

Even after a couple of weeks of re-opened government, I feel essentially shut down. It feels different from the time Newt Gingrich, Son of Chucky, shut the government down in Bill Clinton’s second term. Back then Newt, ironically now of Firing Line, was
counting on Bill to be working late in the White House so he could send in Monica Lewinski with some pizza. Game on! Three years of impeachment shenanigans. Those were the good old days.

Twenty-four billion dollars and rising international laughing stocks later, I like to wonder what would have happened if women had tried to shut the government down? Odds are we would have been in orange onesies in Gitmo in two hours, and I’d be playing Big Boo, what Honey Boo-Boo will look like when she grows up. We would never have made it to twelve days.

Apparently I’m not as shutdown as some of the Affordable Care Act Portals with the rotating rainbow assholes endlessly spinning
on timed-out pages. Where are all the geniuses who data-minded President Obama’s re-election? They can’t all be developing the next shiny new thing. Where are the Grindr people? Edward Snowden has time on his hands. No one asked me to be a healthcare navigator, so they can’t be that desperate.

Perhaps it’s that I’ve been out of town, reading newspapers on my iPad, saving trees, but harming untold numbers of Chinese youth. Not too many youth, because it’s an iPAD-mini that seems to mini-mize all news, allowing me to read the headlines, with perhaps two explanatory sentences and then go on to the next news-bit. All is flattened — government shutdown to marriage equality in NJ to baseball playoffs — in one feathery swipe.

What has really shut me down is the lumpen passivity of the phrase “Government Shutdown.” As if one morning the behemoth of the federal government, like some slimy, belching cartoon amoeba, emitted one last horrible gasp and folded in on itself. As if there were not perfidious, seditious, ungenerous losers — The Tyranny of the Weak — who funded, planned and carried out the Shutdown Juggernaut that rolled over the poor, seniors, veterans, and other non-essential people.

Maybe if I dress up like Polyanna for Halloween, I’ll get in a better mood. Or HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius before she’s impeached. Or maybe Cory Booker. Congratulations New Jersey!